Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer who won the 2003 Nobel Peace
Prize, is scheduled to speak on campus today, two years after a
similar event elicited protests and a minor incident of
violence.
Addressing a crowd that Judy Lin, senior media relations officer
at UCLA, estimates will be around 1,000 to 1,200 people, Ebadi will
speak about her recently published memoir on her experiences in
Iran over the past several decades.
Ebadi, the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to receive a
Nobel Peace Price, was given the award for her dedication to human
rights and a nonviolent, evolutionary process for change in the
Iranian government.
Nareyeh Tohidi, a professor of women’s studies who is
coordinating the event, said Ebadi works to promote the rights of
Iranian women and children, and advocates democracy and equality
between men and women.
“Media tends to … portray only the extremist side of
Muslim society” Tohidi said. “Ebadi is trying to
counter that.”
But Ebadi’s ideas and methods of reform have drawn critics
both within Iran and in the international community.
Religious extremists in Iran do not support her because Ebadi
represents the rights of everyone, regardless of religion. Those
who oppose Ebadi also criticize her support of a peaceful
transition to democracy in Iran, saying the current government
should be overthrown immediately, a move that would require
military action.
Some of those opponents were present the last time Ebadi spoke
at UCLA, in May 2004, when about a dozen protestors were present in
front of Royce Hall, Tohidi said.
On that occasion, Ebadi was interrupted by an outburst that
resulted in police action when one protestor slapped an audience
member who supported Ebadi and another voiced his objections to
Ebadi’s method during the question-and-answer portion of the
event, according to Daily Bruin archives.
Ebadi is a problematic figure for extremist groups in Iran
because she does not support military action against the
government, believing that a more effective approach would be to
“work inside Iran to reform (and) change the system
gradually,” Tohidi said, adding that Ebadi believes a
military attack would “only create problems.”
Since opening her law firm in Tehran in 1992, Ebadi has taken
“cases with national or international implications,”
Tohidi said.
Ebadi is most famous for a case in which she persuaded the
Iranian government’s intelligence service to admit to its
involvement in serial murders, Tohidi said. Ebadi also represented
the murder victim of a government attack on a university
dormitory.
Ebadi currently teaches human rights training courses at Tehran
University.
“You can’t find any books on human rights that
don’t quote from Ebadi,” Tohidi said.
According to Random House publicist Karen Fink, Ebadi has been
reaching out to students, visiting third graders in a New York
elementary school. Her plans also include visiting numerous other
college campuses.
Ebadi is the author of twelve books, two of which have been
published by UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s
fund. Ebadi will be speaking Monday about what she hopes to achieve
with her newest book and “what she wants people to get out of
it,” Fink said.
The event, sponsored by the Center for Near Eastern Studies, is
part of the Persian Lecture Series, which has invited scholars,
artists and professors to UCLA for the past three years.
Tohidi said the goal of the lecture series is to act as “a
vehicle for intellectual communication” and to promote
knowledge of Middle Eastern language. The program offers bilingual
presentations, with lecturers speaking in Persian on Sundays and
providing another presentation in English on Mondays.
Guest speakers in the past have included Iranian poet Simin
Behbahani and former Iranian finance minister and prominent
economist Dr. Jahangir Amuzegar.
“We usually choose speakers who have just published a new
book or article that has become a subject of debate or interest in
the Iranian community,” Tohidi said.